Talk:Aurochs
So if they were able to document the time and place of death of the last specimen of the species in the seventeenth century, what was with all the eighteenth-century biologists who insisted that it was impossible for a species to go extinct? Speaking of biologists, can we boil some of the jargon out of the intro? It reads like the Mammals category would if MBS had gone ahead with his proposed subcats. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:14, July 28, 2019 (UTC) :I'm assuming this is one of those things that only becomes obvious in distant hindsight. Maybe at the time the aurochs was not considered to have been a separate species from domestic cattle.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 07:52, July 29, 2019 (UTC) ::Hmm, perhaps. I seem to remember learning at one point that a species is not considered extinct if it can be shown to have evolved into something else that's still with us, and I suppose "evolved into something else" can cover the domestication process as well as natural selection. ::There's an aurochs in Werenight, by the way. Gerin reflects that the father of one of his bannermen had been killed hunting a wild aurochs. Much later, the Trokme wizard who is the book's big bad (at least until the werenight happens) possesses another animal and attempts to gore Gerin. ::Just a couple weeks ago I donated my copy of Tale of the Fox to the library after many, many years of its gathering dust. I should have known that as soon as I did so I'd have occasion to wish it were handy for a Wiki edit. Turtle Fan (talk) 09:22, July 29, 2019 (UTC) :::Nice cow, pity it had to go extinct though. --JCC the Alternate Historian (talk) 16:35, July 29, 2019 (UTC) ::::I don't know much about the aurochs specifically, but I actually have done a little reading on the process of domestication of animals generally. When you compare any domesticated animal to its wild cousins, no matter what the specific purpose of the domestication may have been (a food source, a beast of burden, pest control, security) a few universal changes are observed. (These are also found if you compare bonobos to chimpanzees, and. for that matter, if you compare Cro-Magnons to our best-guess reconstructions of the various extinct members of genus Homo.) They include being more vocal (since attracting the attention of their human handlers is suddenly more important to their survival than sneaking up on prey and/or sneaking past predators); increased fertility, increased sex drive, sexual maturity at a younger age, and often though not always shorter gestation periods (since human breeders will want to be able to expand the population of the animal quickly to keep up with rising economic demand); more compacted facial features (I'm not sure why); and, for obvious reasons, less aggression toward humans. ::::With that last point in mind, I'm afraid that, if you're using typically docile Bos taurus behavior as a basis for comparison, you would have found that the aurochs was not a nice cow at all! ::::I do agree that it's a pity it's gone extinct, given how badly loss of biodiversity is affecting our environment--especially in the aurochs' native Europe. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:36, July 29, 2019 (UTC) :::::When I said it was a nice cow, I was saying that the auroch was a nice looking one. --JCC the Alternate Historian (talk) 14:05, August 1, 2019 (UTC) ::::::Eh. I suppose. I really wouldn't know what makes a cow good-looking. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:02, August 1, 2019 (UTC)